Yes­ter­day I wrote about choice & how the most impor­tant thing you can do in your life is make a choice. What do you do after you make the choice? You change your per­spec­tive.

Per­spec­tive change is sim­i­lar to the con­cept of cre­at­ing a new life story which allows you to change your thoughts by cre­at­ing a new ver­sion of your present sit­u­a­tion (your story).
Sim­i­larly per­spec­tive change is just switch­ing how you feel about a neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion into more pos­i­tive sit­u­a­tion. Every­thing has both a pos­i­tive & a neg­a­tive side (at least on the sur­face, really it’s all the same stuff), so per­spec­tive change is just about lit­er­ally switch­ing is in your mind how you feel about some­thing. What once was a bur­den now becomes a joy.

These are some of my more fre­quent hangups & the sub­se­quent per­spec­tive change ‘anti­dotes’ to them:

• Neg­a­tive– I waste my time learn­ing about & doing so many dif­fer­ent things, as opposed to focus­ing & becom­ing an expert on one thing. // Pos­i­tive– This bet­ter allows me to make con­nec­tions & BE con­nected. Ideas that wouldn’t nor­mally come about, sud­denly arise when you’re able to con­nect com­pletely unre­lated things. (Plu­ral­ism! Study both busi­ness advice & physics, sports & fash­ion & see what sur­pris­ing new ideas may arise!)
• Neg­a­tive– Like the pre­vi­ous one, I worry about my ideas, my writ­ing, my art, my life wont seem cohe­sive (or make any sense). // Pos­i­tive– “Don’t throw any of your­self away. Don’t worry about a grand scheme or uni­fied vision for your work. Don’t worry about unity– what uni­fies your work is the fact that you made it. One day, you’ll look back & it will all make sense.” –Austin Kleon.
• Neg­a­tive– I’m melo­dra­matic, anx­ious, weird, loud, dis­tracted. // Pos­i­tive- I’m PASSIONATE, excited, inter­est­ing, enthu­si­as­tic, creative.
• Neg­a­tive– I feel stuck, unpro­duc­tive, BLOCKED. // Pos­i­tive- It’s usu­ally after we become stuck, when we’re des­per­ate enough to quit, to just give up, that we have the BIG idea, that the answer shows up, that we cre­ate our best work. It’s like jump­ing into the prover­bial abyss, you’re lost & alone & things are really shitty for a while, but then we come out the other side as even more mag­i­cal creatures.
• Neg­a­tive– I have so much to do// Pos­i­tive- There’s so much I WANT TO DO.
• Neg­a­tive– Things are so bad, I feel so lousy or sick or depleted or insert neg­a­tive emo­tion here. // Pos­i­tive– neg­a­tive emo­tions are there for a rea­son, a les­son we haven’t learned yet or just the expe­ri­ence of con­trast so that we really KNOW how good we got it. Neg­a­tive emo­tions are usu­ally the best time for growth, since we don’t like feel­ing this way we invest in soul search­ing. Neg­a­tiv­ity is the cat­a­lyst for positivity.
• Neg­a­tive– I’m really scared to start this new project/ relationship/ job/ etc (this is how how I’ve been feel­ing lately with a new job loom­ing in a week.) // Pos­i­tive– I’m really EXCITED to be start­ing this new adven­ture. The oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth, learn­ing, oppor­tu­nity & con­nec­tions are abun­dant. Who knows what this could lead to?
• Neg­a­tive– I’m a big freakin fail­ure! // Pos­i­tive– We’ve all heard so much about how good fail­ure is, fail hard & fail often, fail­ure leads to suc­cess if you don’t give up, yadda yadda. But really, every­thing is one big exper­i­ment to see what works/ what res­onates in life. So if some­thing failed, it’s just the results of an exper­i­ment– that thing didn’t work in your life, could it be tweaked or altered? Keep going, try a new exper­i­ment. You don’t feel bad test­ing a new prod­uct to see if it fits in your life, you think “hey maybe this will work,” & if it doesn’t you shrug & try another thing. There is no real fail­ure & there is no real suc­cess, it’s all just one big experiment.
• Neg­a­tive- I get bored eas­ily, leave books mid­way through, for­get about projects on occa­sion. // Pos­i­tive– If I always have mul­ti­ple things going on, if I get tired of one of them I can go back & work on the oth­ers with fresh eyes. Tired of a paint­ing? Work on my web­site for a while, tired of that, go back to the paint­ing & do that for a while. Even­tu­ally the things that need to get done, get done, & every­thing left behind wasn’t a proper fit for me anyway.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head, but really any­thing neg­a­tive can be a pos­i­tive. (It’s a PARADOX). Every­thing pos­i­tive can be neg­a­tive too, but as I said yes­ter­day, why inten­tion­ally focus on the negative?

What are some other exam­ples of per­spec­tive change you use or could use in your own life? I’m always look­ing for new things to try out to increase my max­i­mum amount of joy!

Related Posts:

• Thoughts on exis­ten­tial choice
• I wanted to write this post
• Incog­nito & prac­ti­cal evolution
• How to be an Outlaw
• Prin­ci­ples of Art: Steal from your­self (aka, every­thing is an artists tool)